resistance
by Last of the Loneliness
Summary: It wasn't exactly love. There just wasn't a better word for it.
1. You were right about me

**A/N: Doing one of those 30-day drabble prompts based on Mai/Azula/Ty Lee and variations thereof. They'll just be short little snippets. Enjoy!**

**Warning: Some of the content may be sexually explicit, some may be non-con, and Ozai/Azula will be a background theme in some of these.**

* * *

They weren't friends. Had they ever been friends? Maybe a long, long time ago, before Mai and Ty Lee left, before Azula came to the deadly conclusion that emotions were weakness and friendship was a luxury for those of lesser standing.

Mai still spent time in those uncomfortable memories. Even with Zuko by her side, even with the assurance that her current relationship was a healthy one, the poison wouldn't be washed free from her system.

Mai hadn't been clueless. She had suspected something of Azula's twisted obsession with her. Azula had sought her out, not vice versa. Azula had come to her more than once, demanding to know whether Mai preferred Zuko or Azula. And every time, Mai had managed to weasel her way out of answering. She liked Zuko, but making an enemy of the princess was a horrible idea.

And sooner or later, refusing to deny Azula turned into something else. Even then, even as a child, Mai had suspected that she and Ty were just dolls to Azula, just things to be played with and cast away. But Azula's games weren't always unpleasant, and there were days when Mai would have been hard-pressed to name which royal sibling was her favorite.

The years when they were apart hadn't ended the game.

Azula had grown, mind and body. And this time, her kisses weren't quite as harmless. Mai found resistance difficult and pointless, but she still found herself hating herself for enjoying it, for enjoying the look on Azula's face and Ty's limber form and the way they all came together in dim rooms lit by candles with blue flames. Hair, light brown and dark brown and black, all intertwined, woven together as if they came from one head.

Azula was vicious and petty. The taunts and barbs, physical and verbal, piled up. Mai hardened her skin, pretending they didn't hurt. She missed Zuko, whose words were only unintentionally hurtful. And yet she didn't entirely hate the feud, the verbal duels that too often progressed into something physical.

She hated loving it, and told herself she didn't love it.

Now, even with Zuko by her side, even with Azula in the asylum, Mai couldn't entirely forget the taste of the princess's lips, the heat in her fingertips, and the soft and deadly whispers in her ear.

She wouldn't ever tell Azula the truth.

_You were right about me._

_I liked your games._


	2. I was wrong about you

Mai was many things.

Mai was sharp and quiet and subdued and calculating and strong and_ intelligent_. Mai was beautiful and graceful and more than worthy of being the Fire Lady. The only question was whether she would be at Zuko's right hand or Azula's, sharing the seat with Ty Lee.

Her quiet power was one of many things Azula loved about Mai. She was capable of saying many things with silence; each of her movements contained a multitude of clues as to what she was thinking or feeling. It only made sense for a child who had been raised in such a confined environment to end up so passive-aggressive. And Azula took advantage of Mai's passivity. She would see how far she could go, exactly how much pressure it took to make Mai snap.

It took a lot.

It took careless touches and suggestive glances, eyes drifting where they never should have gone. It took a bit of fire and a bit of ice. Ultimately, Azula found herself disappointed, when she and Mai lay intertwined, skin on skin, and still Mai was a statue. Still her mask was unbroken.

Gradually Azula began to suspect that she was not the only one of the three who wore an excellent façade. Little by little, she began to suspect that Mai's might have been stronger, more complete.

_What are you hiding from me?_ she asked, in the form of bites where she dug her teeth in deeper and deeper each time. _Show me what you really are. Show me what you really want,_ she demanded, when her fingers made Mai's control weaken, when Mai's back bowed and her breath came in short, unrestrained gasps.

Are you thinking about me?

Are you thinking about _him_?

Azula depended on Mai's intelligence. If it were not for her mind, Azula would have never allowed the other girl near her. Mai loved Zuko, but Mai was smart. Azula was stronger. Azula could kill Mai; Azula could kill Zuko. So Mai played along, did as she was told, and Azula convinced herself that Mai was too smart to quit the game.

Ty Lee was the buffer. In between the two, she stopped them from destroying each other. Mai and Azula were both cold, both sharp, Azula pushing and pushing and Mai taking and taking. Perhaps Ty had seen the signs. Perhaps she had realized what lay behind Mai's mask. Perhaps she didn't want Azula to push Mai to the breaking point.

Whatever Ty Lee's intentions, they were all for nothing in the end. All the hugs and kisses she had dealt out ended up having no impact on reality.

Azula pushed too hard. Mai snapped. The façade broke. Mai wasn't smart.

_You miscalculated._

Azula hated thinking about her, more than anything else. She had been a fool. She had depended on Mai saving her own skin. She had seen Mai's mind. It had drawn them together in the beginning. But Mai had proven to be every bit as foolish as everybody else.

_I was wrong about you._


	3. This cancels out the hurt

It was something they didn't discuss.

They saw the marks he left on her. They saw the bruises and the burns, the trail of bite marks down her neck. They saw the cuts where his fingernails had dug into her skin. Azula never brought them up. Once, just once, Ty Lee had dared to ask whether Azula wasn't hurting, ignoring the warning look on Mai's face.

The glare in those bright golden eyes had been more than enough to end that topic forever.

Despite herself, despite knowing that she was supposed to ignore them, Ty Lee couldn't help leaving kisses on each and every bruise, each and every dark, painful spot on Azula's skin. She imagined Ozai's fingers there, gripping too tightly, painfully, and planted her lips there instead. Her care couldn't take the marks away, but she wanted to abate the pain. For every careless scar Ozai left on his daughter, Ty Lee left a purposeful declaration of commitment.

_I care about you. I want to see your skin whole and undamaged. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be left alone_.

Azula didn't always go along with Ty Lee's gentle ministrations. She wasn't always content to lie back and let the lips ghost over her skin. Some days, she was angry. Some days, she was as vicious as her father.

Azula left marks on both of them, Mai and Ty Lee alike. Her fingers made bruises and her too-hot hands made burns. She dug her teeth into their throats and shoulders and sucked and sucked as if she would take their breath away. The heat on her skin was vicious, uncontrollable.

It scared Ty Lee. There was too much to Azula; there was too much boiling underneath the surface. Ozai had put a kettle over a flame and never come back to fetch it.

She didn't care that many nights she had to nurse her own small injuries. Azula only held so tightly because she had to know that something was there. Azula only hurt because she had been hurt herself. If it would relieve the pressure to be Azula's punching bag, Ty Lee thought she was willing to make that sacrifice.

"Are you all right? She's really done a number on you." Mai's voice was quiet, but Ty Lee always heard her.

"What? It's no problem at all! They don't hurt at all, I promise!"

Ty Lee wasn't as good at lying as Azula.

Mai said that if she resisted enough, Azula wouldn't push as hard. And it was true that Mai didn't ever look as if she had been attacked by a ravenous beast, which was how Mai described Ty Lee after her encounters with the princess.

But Ty Lee didn't want to push back. She would take and take as much as was necessary. She would bring it on herself, not out of some sense of masochism but because she thought Azula needed it. Every night, after Ozai was done with Azula, Azula came to Ty Lee, and Ty Lee did what she could to help Azula forget the marks her father left.

_Let me cancel out the hurt._


	4. I need to want you

Mai thought frequently about it.

The three of them were similar in ways none of them would admit. Mai's parents were caring but stifling, more in love with the idea of a child than the reality of it. She had never made friends easily, mostly for a lack of trying. Before Azula and Ty Lee, Mai had never had close friends.

Were they close, she wondered? Or was that just a pretense that all of them had grown used to upholding? It didn't really take emotional closeness to do the things they did, to lay lips on skin and touch flesh to flesh.

Ty Lee had no identity and no voice in her family. She was one among many, essentially interchangeable with the next daughter. And yet she was the outgoing one of the trio, the one who laughed honestly and smiled easily and made friends with whomever came within her reach. She wore her friendliness like a shield. And like a shield, it kept people at a distance. Ty Lee had many friends, and almost no true friends.

Was she just smiling for Azula's benefit? Was she simply with them out of fear? Was there nothing underneath her hugs and kind words? Yet she was the one who seemed to enjoy the game the most. Ty Lee didn't push or pull the way Mai and Azula did. She let herself be swept into their embraces. She didn't fight it.

And then there was the princess herself. Azula never talked about her problems; Azula never talked about her feelings. But Mai knew that Azula had nobody but Ozai, and Ozai's love was the same as Mai's parents' love—conditional.

They were all alone, the three, each with her own goals, each with her own desperate dreams. Even as they kissed, spent long nights in each other's arms, traded touches and caresses, their minds were all elsewhere.

Mai dreamed of Zuko, of the only relationship she had ever known that wasn't tainted. He had been a friend, and then something more, and though he was hard-headed and impulsive and selfish he cared about her, which was more than she could say for anyone else.

Ty Lee dreamed of the circus, the life she had made for herself, freedom. She didn't want to be one among many. She didn't want to blend in to her sisters. She wanted her escape and her liberty, and she had gone after it with her own hands and feet and heart.

Azula dreamed of her father and her future. She dreamed of Ozai's praise, of coming home to happiness, of the crown that would one day be hers. Occasionally, Ursa would worm her way into the dreams, inevitably leaving Azula feeling cold and melancholy.

But none of them had what they wanted. Ty Lee had been dragged away from her freedom. Mai was complicit in the pursuit of the only person she truly cared about. And Azula spent every waking moment knowing that the longer it took her to carry out her mission, the more Ozai would lose faith in her.

They only had each other, broken people with broken dreams, and they held onto it as tightly as they could, all of them terrified of ripping the fabric of the illusion.

_I need to want you._


	5. You can be like me

The opposites came together in an uneasy truce, a truce negotiated by fire and fists, of power and a lack thereof, of malice and caring.

Their original goals and desires were set aside until it was only the present moment that mattered. They came together in dimly lit rooms and under thin sheets, in secluded corners and under the broad blue sky. They touched and kissed and bit with all the fervor and passion in the world, clothes or no clothes, lips finding lips and hips finding hips, a dialogue where each was attempting to convince the other.

_I want to help you._

Ty Lee often felt that she knew Azula better than anybody else did. She had been by the princess's side when they were children, and their relationship had started from that point when they met again as allies. Unlike Mai, who was caught between the family's two siblings, a pawn constantly being pulled at by both sides, Ty Lee had no other allegiances. She cared about Azula. She truly, truly cared.

She was willing to let Azula order her around like a dog. She would follow every order to the best of her capabilities. Fear? Yes. She feared Azula and what she was capable of. But more than anything, Ty Lee feared for Azula's own sake. She was too close to the edge and pushing herself closer. Ty Lee wanted to be underneath to catch her.

She endured the bites and the bruises, and being fucked by Azula wasn't only pain. When the princess's fingers, blazing hot, trailed over her collarbone and her breasts, Ty Lee forgot herself. She let herself be lost in the sensations. Sex was simple. They came together and understood each other. Ty Lee took it all, one thought left in her mind.

_You can be like me_.

It was cruel, and Azula knew it. Ty Lee was her scratching post, her punching bag. She had taken out her frustrations on her own skin in the past, and now she took them out on Ty Lee. Every kiss was meant to bruise, every caress laced with blue flame. She looked at Ty Lee's skin, marred with small injuries, and the sight brought vicious pride and heinous satisfaction together in her.

Everything he did to me, I'll do to her.

She couldn't escape her father's shadow. Even when it was just her and Ty Lee and the cover of night and darkness, she felt Ozai's presence. He was always there, and especially there when Azula began kissing her friends. What would he think of her? What would he say to her?

She was simply passing on the favor. Her father had ground his pain into her, and she was handing the burden on to others. But she was different—she made sure they enjoyed it, and that was almost the ultimate rush. They were under her fingers, under her control. She could control it, and that made her feel safer.

_I want to corrupt you_.

Mai walked in on them (more than once), and when it was all over, the three of them tangled together, she spoke.

"You both looked so…intense."

Azula laughed, patronizing, patting one hand against Mai's dark hair.

"Don't be so melodramatic. It's only _sex_."


	6. I want to need you

_This is my daughter. She's very pretty, isn't she?_

_My daughter scored highest in her class on last week's test._

_She has manners. She knows when to speak and when to stay silent. Smile for them. Smile for them. No—not like that. I'm sorry; I don't know what's gotten into her. Go to bed without dinner tonight._

What was left inside of her that her parents hadn't stomped out?

Whenever Mai smiled, she remembered her mother's reproaching her for never showing her teeth. Whenever she laughed, she remembered her father's stern adage that children should be seen and not heard.

Mai couldn't really remember crying as a child. The instant she had, she knew, she would be sent away, whisked into a servant's arms and coddled until she stopped. When she grew old enough to be trained, her parents started punishing her whenever she cried. So she didn't. Thriving in her household was a simple matter of doing exactly what her parents wanted. The rewards were always material, but Mai hadn't known what else there was. Emotional gratification was abstract to her.

"Mai, what are you _doing_?"

It was just her and Ty Lee; Azula had gone off to make sure that the general of the squadron with which they were traveling was well-informed about their destination.

It was a habit she had picked up as a child. Mai gravitated toward knives and stilettos for several reasons. One of them was that she was good at it. One of them was the sharp edge. When bored, when distracted, when feeling purposeless, she spun them in her hands. When boredom evaporated into numbness, she drew them across her skin. She had plenty of scars in places her parents wouldn't think to look.

The pain, the biting sensation, the nigh-unbearable feeling that swept through her nerves as she split her skin, kept her grounded. It reminded her who she was. Every red droplet was a testimony that she was real. There was still something inside of her, something that existed without her parents' permission. They had never told her heart to pump, her lungs to inflate, or her skin to bleed. But when she cut, she knew that she was real.

"What? Oh—nothing." Disinterested, Mai was in the middle of wiping blood away from her upper arm when she found herself caught up in a hug. She was so surprised she very nearly dropped the knife, but managed to cling on.

"Don't do that. Please! It scares me when you do that." When Ty drew back slightly, Mai was surprised to see that there were tears in her eyes. She hadn't wanted to make Ty Lee cry. She hadn't even wanted to hurt herself. The scars were a byproduct. She just wanted an anchor.

Ty Lee was there, still looking worried. Mai tilted her head and closed the gap between them, lips pressing to lips. Ty smelled good. Ty Lee's body was warm against hers. She was an anchor. Surely that intimacy, the pleasant warmth in her stomach, was as good at affirming reality as pain…

_I want to need you._

Mai imagined her mother's voice clearly in her head. _What are you doing? You're supposed to marry a nobleman! Don't go around kissing girls! Is that how I raised you? _

Though Ty Lee was there, she felt lighter and lighter, as if she was becoming insubstantial. Mai's skin was tingling. The warmth was gone. She drew back, the feeling of kissing already having left her lips. She met Ty Lee's watery gaze.

"Please don't do that," Ty Lee said again, a wobbly smile crossing her face.

Mai forced her lips to curve upward._ Don't smile without your teeth._ "Okay."

She shifted her grasp on the knife from the handle to the blade, feeling it dig into her palm as she leaned in for another kiss.


	7. Prove it

It started, as so many other things started, with a taunt.

Pushing Mai was Azula's forte, a game that obeyed neither rules nor logic and had no definitive outcome. Azula liked seeing how much Mai would take. Usually, the stoic girl would only acknowledge insults with a shrug. Sometimes she ignored them altogether. And sometimes, Mai wouldn't take it any longer. She would stand up to Azula.

Those were the times Azula liked most. When Mai stood up, after all, it meant that Azula could crush her down.

"You're such a coward. Look at you." Azula laughed while she said it, like it was a joke, like she didn't mean each of the deadly words falling from her lips.

"Mmm." Mai didn't really respond. She kept staring out the window, as if trying to keep her thoughts fixed elsewhere.

"You wouldn't stand up to anyone. You always take the easiest road out."

"Please stop, Azula," Ty Lee murmured, resting one hand on the princess's shoulder, though she was looking at Mai. As usual, Azula paid no attention.

"You can't even tell me to stop yourself."

Mai turned away from the window, her eyebrows furrowing. The show of emotion was more than she usually displayed, and just that simple victory sent a rush through Azula.

"I can stand up for myself," Mai said, her voice level and even, no matter what her face said about her emotions.

"Oh?" Azula's painted lips curled into a dangerous smile, her eyes gleaming. "_Prove it_."

The words, it seemed, triggered something in Mai. Her face was no longer perfectly controlled, but contorted into a mask of anger. She stepped forward, bridging the gap between herself and Azula so quickly that the princess barely had time to react. Mai fixed clawlike hands on Azula's shoulders, spinning her and pinning her against the wall.

It hurt. Azula's head met the stone. She didn't cry out, but her eyes narrowed. This game wasn't as amusing, and she would have to teach Mai a lesson for acting out—

Mai's mouth met Azula's, not gentle, but feverish, biting down on the princess's lips until she drew blood. The taste filled Azula's mouth with a familiar metallic tang. She had drawn her own blood before, but nobody else had ever dared touch her this way, except—

Mai wasn't done. Her fingers were reaching under Azula's armor, dancing across her upper torso, and then her other hand slipped under the waistband of Azula's pants, and then—

It wasn't a game any longer.

It was only Mai, Azula knew. That was what all of her physical senses were telling her. It was only Mai, and she could push her away at any moment, burn her, punish her, make her regret she had ever thought of this…

But the logic didn't help, because this did not feel like Mai. This felt distinctly like someone else, someone who came and took whatever he wanted from Azula, who touched her however he liked and never bothered with gentleness. And instinctually, despite her own will, Azula felt her eyes going glassy, her mind disconnecting from the present, and her body going limp.

"Mai, stop it!"

Ty Lee broke them apart.

Maybe she had seen the look on Azula's face. Maybe she had simply known that there would surely be repercussions. And now the princess was coming back to herself.

Mai didn't meet her eyes. She was staring vacantly to one side, her lips dripping blood, as if she couldn't quite believe what she had just done.

"Don't ever do that again." Azula advanced on Mai, igniting a blue flame in her right hand, her golden eyes gleaming dangerously. "You're going to be sorry."

And Mai was.

And yet, when the time came, she would stand up to Azula again.


	8. I'm cruel

_I am a princess._

Was it the sensations themselves she enjoyed, or the guilt that accompanied them? Did she enjoy the act or the rebellion inherent in it? Was it pleasurable when they did as she ordered, or was being the one who was ordering the true pleasure?

Secretly, she could have anybody she wanted. She chose them because they would keep her secrets. They were by her side. They were loyal.

Publicly, with her father's hand on her shoulder and his touch coloring her every action, she could have nobody. She was untouchable, and not only because of her status. It wasn't her status that made Ozai take her to bed, strip the clothes from her, and do as he liked.

Was it her status that made them kneel down, do as she asked? What made Ty Lee suck and lick, her tongue exploring the skin where Azula's legs met? What made Mai's hands and lips ravish her breasts? Was it Azula's title, or the threat of flame from her fingertips, or was it _her? _Did_ they_ enjoy it?

Was it _fear_ or _love_?

It didn't really matter in the end, as Azula's spine tingled and her hands tightened in her girls' hair and waves of pleasure came crashing down around her.

It didn't matter afterwards, when she sent them away, her tone harsh and her body closed off, not hers, not theirs. Azula felt no afterglow. She lay alone and felt the shadows creeping closer, imagining someone else in bed with her, and her fingers unconsciously traced the places where his hands would latch.

What would Ozai say if he knew about these dalliances? What would he do if he knew that his hands were not the only ones to traverse the planes of Azula's form? Would he punish her or punish them? Both, Azula decided.

At home, at the palace of the Fire Nation, she resisted and resisted, knowing that the dangers were greater, knowing that her father's ears and eyes were everywhere. But when frustrations piled up, she took the gamble and allowed herself to lie back on silken sheets, her body supported by pillows as Mai and Ty Lee did as she liked.

It was physical, she told herself easily, not emotional. The guilt was natural, but unnecessary. She was loyal to her father. They were only a diversion, something to keep her entertained.

She kept the secret anyway, because Ozai wouldn't understand.

He summoned her at night, before she had the chance to bathe, and she wondered whether he noticed the faint signs of her friends—the slightest of smells, a long hair, darker than her own, caught in her robe…

It didn't really matter in the end. He used her. She used them. He owned her. She owned them. It was all reactionary.

He was cruel.

_I am cruel._


	9. Always wondered what this'd be like

She let them stay the night with her once, just once. Once was more than enough.

Azula remembered when they had been children, when Mai and Ty Lee had spent the night, when all three had fallen asleep holding each other's hands. Back then, the greatest pain Azula had known was accidentally burning herself. Back then, she hadn't needed to hold herself together with lies and ambition.

She had been innocent.

In the night, in the wake of sex, it hadn't seemed a foolish idea. They were already there, they were already tired, and Azula didn't want to bother with kicking them out. They drifted off to sleep, Ty Lee first, then Mai, and Azula in the center wrapped an arm around each of them and felt their warmth. It kept her comfortable, happy, as she drifted off to sleep.

She hadn't made the connection then that being held in her friends' arms was reminiscent of being held in her mother's.

In the morning, Azula was the first to awaken.

The sun spilled through her curtains, draped dazzling golden light across her desk and her drapes and onto the sheets, making Ty Lee's skin shine and small bright lights dance in the shadows of Mai's hair. It would have been beautiful. It could have been perfect.

But none of it was real.

They weren't really even her friends.

Azula had burned her bridges.

Ty Lee was there only because Azula had left her no choice, because Azula had threatened her. Mai was there without needing the threat—she had known what would come and anticipated it. They were there out of fear, out of loyalty to their royal family.

They were lovers only in name, only because of the actions they took in the dark, skin against skin and lips on lips. There wasn't any love. They were Azula's pawns, her tools, to be directed and utilized as she willed. And in return, they feared her, doing as she ordered because the alternative was too deadly.

It was a lie.

Azula looked at them, Ty Lee at her right side, Mai on her left, and she wished for a very long moment that she could believe it. She wanted to believe that there was more between them, that their connection wasn't simply tenuous loyalty and convenience. She wanted to believe that the only relationships that mattered in her life weren't as hollow as the infinite conversations she held with nobles. She wanted to feel the happiness that supposedly came with love, that came with seeing a lover in the morning, still fast asleep and peaceful.

She couldn't.

It was foolish.

She wasn't a child any longer, and she couldn't hold on to childish dreams. Attachments led to pain. People would turn on her. She was safe only when she was alone. She was strong only when she severed her emotion and used people as she would Pai Sho tiles.

But logic couldn't erase the longing from her mind.

She slipped out from between the two of them, stood at the end of the bed, and looked back. Ty Lee, perhaps noticing the absence of warmth, shifted in her sleep, rolling over, coming to a rest with her arms around Mai.

It looked better with just the two of them.

Azula left her room.


	10. I'm broken

It was evening. Ty Lee had gone out into the city to visit her family, the first time she would see them since leaving for the circus. Mai was spending time with the royal sibling she clearly preferred. The thought of them together, laughing, fingers and legs entwined, was more than enough to rouse Azula's ire.

She sat alone in the dark and tried not to think about it. The servants were gone; Lo and Li had retired to their chambers, and it was just the fire princess alone with the shadows.

She bathed in water hot enough to scald and let her hair fan out a curtain on the surface. She pulled on her robe and extinguished the candles one by one.

She glanced at the bed but didn't bother climbing in. Azula knew when she wouldn't be able to sleep. She walked out onto her balcony and stared out at the lights of the city, tiny windows in distant houses illuminated by torches and candles. Somewhere out there was Ty Lee, probably experiencing a joyous reunion, embraced by all of her sisters, her parents looking on. Here in the palace were Mai and Zuko, having their own fun, all thoughts of others forgotten.

Azula remembered the years after Zuko's banishment. She had been alone then, utterly alone. She had no friends and no companions. Ozai and his watchdogs, the twins, had been the only constants. And yet that hadn't left her feeling like this, irritatingly hollow, left out, as if something important was missing.

Loneliness was a useless emotion. A stupid emotion. But she couldn't suppress it. It was welling inside of her, filling her with a need for something, anything to hold on to.

Sleep would be the best idea, but her insomnia ensured that was not a possibility.

Alone in the darkness, Azula's thoughts spiraled downward.

It was the foregone conclusion, and she reached it with relief. Her hands rummaged through her closet, searching for the sheath. She found it and smiled at it and opened it, surveying the knife. It was clean, all silver, though it had tasted her blood before.

Stroke by stroke, Azula smiled as she punished herself for weakness. Stroke by stroke, alone in the darkness, Azula's breath caught and her hair hung over as blood beaded up along neat, straight incisions.

Engrossed as she was, she didn't hear the door open, or the soft footsteps behind her.

"…Azula."

The princess stiffened, knife still in one hand, the vicious rapture fading from her face.

"I thought you were with Zuko."

Mai moved across the room without permission, seating herself beside Azula. Azula tensed, ready to lash out at any given moment.

"I was. I left."

"Oh?"

Mai hesitated for a long moment, staring down at her hands. "He deserves better than me."

Azula looked at Mai, the very faint light glimmering in her dark hair, the long slope of her eyes, her thin lips, and did not find her wanting.

_You deserve better than him._ "He deserves nothing." _You could have chosen me. Why didn't you choose me? I'm better. I'm stronger._

The kiss, when Mai initiated it, was not romantic. It was desperate and vicious and angry. Mai pulled the princess close, her nails digging into Azula's back, her teeth sucking and biting Azula's neck. There would be marks; she was trying to leave marks.

_So when you feel inferior, you come to me? _The thought made Azula smirk and push back, and she remembered the knife still in her hand_. I should be first._

Azula's blood, still wet, still sticky, bound them together, and Azula's fingers and the knife found the openings of Mai's clothes. Azula's robe was easy to slip off, and then it was only skin and blood, for Mai's nails dug for purchase and her teeth tore skin, and the knife in Azula's hand was eager and hungry and everywhere it drew Mai's blood, the princess's tongue followed it, and the two of them mingled pleasure and pain, hatred and anger, loneliness and inferiority.

It was not about the sex.

_We're—_

_-broken._


	11. Thought I needed this

Azula traced her feet carelessly over ground where they had stepped together before. She lay alone in the indentations in her sheets and held her hands out to feel the phantoms lying on either side of her. She imagined them laughing, imagined them there beside her, tried to remember when they had been there.

When the memories didn't resurface, when the pain stayed manageable, she took it further. She ordered her servants to braid her hair and pretended it was Ty's hands moving along her scalp. She smashed Mai's perfume in her washroom and smelled it, day after day after day, as if Mai's spirit was lingering there, as if she had just left.

But she didn't mourn them, and she came to realize that she didn't miss them. No reminder she forced on herself made her regret leaving them in the bottom of the Fire Nation's most heinous prison. No long day spent only in the company of her maidservants made her wish they were there beside her.

_I'm better off now, you useless wretches_.

At night, in the shadows, her hands furiously mimicked her friends' movements along her body. She didn't bother pretending it was Ty Lee's tongue, and when she came, she threw her head back and stretched her lips into a gruesome smile. She didn't need them.

It was strange.

They had been there for quite some time. Ty Lee's laughter was a constant noise; Mai's soft presence was always tangible. And now there was nothing but void, nothing but the sting of betrayal. They made stupid choices and they were going to pay for them. It didn't bother Azula. She didn't care that they were gone. She didn't care. She didn't care. She didn't…

It was only the realization that she didn't need them that brought Azula any emotion at all. She bent over, head grasped in her fingers, entirely alone and unbothered. Why didn't she feel anything about them betraying her?

Had she seen it coming?

She moved her fingers between her legs again, trying to feel something, trying to feel the absence of something. She thought she had enjoyed them. She thought she had used them for things like this.

_I thought I needed this._

Azula rose out of the shadows and went to Ozai of her own volition, her only garb the robe hung loosely around her shoulders. She didn't mind the servants' stares. Let them think what they wanted. She had already started losing things.

"Azula?" Ozai was alone in his chambers, as usual, and Azula didn't bother with words before she descended on her father, blood pounding through her veins, her mind overflowing with emotions she could not identify.

Ozai was not gentle, as she had not expected him to be. With every touch, he burned away the memories of the traitors.

Azula was happy.


	12. I'm drunk

Azula didn't want it.

The taste sat heavy and harsh on her tongue, making her throat burn, like she was swallowing fire. No—that wasn't an adequate comparison. She didn't mind breathing fire. But she minded this, the taste, the scent, the way it sat in her stomach and ran through her veins.

She didn't want it, but she couldn't say no.

The scent was overpowering. Glass after glass, it reminded her of the stench on her father's breath as he leaned over her, vicious, lustful. She had smelled it on his skin and on his clothes for years. He wasn't always drunk, but when he was…

Ozai had a heavy hand.

"You look so beautiful with your cheeks flushed," he said, his golden eyes devouring her face before he leaned in to kiss her, leaned in to disrobe her. He paused in the midst to pour another glass. Azula couldn't focus on the stream of amber liquid. She didn't want to drink it. But Ozai wanted her to, and so she choked it down, and smiled for him as he ravished her.

The hallways were long and winding and her head was spinning. She had lost count of the glasses. Her father had fallen asleep with his arms around her, but she couldn't stay. She felt as if the walls were closing in around her. Alcohol numbed her mind, made thinking slower and clumsier, but it threw all of her fears into sharp relief.

She staggered, somehow, to her room, nearly falling down one flight of stairs. It took several attempts to open her door.

They were waiting there, in her room. Ty Lee had been asleep, flopped over into Mai's lap, but her eyelids opened nearly as soon as Azula entered.

"Azula…?"

It was immediately apparent that something was not right with her. Ty Lee jumped up, Mai rising slowly after her.

"I don't—feel-" Azula managed, half-collapsing onto the nearest chair. Ty was there in an instant, her hands warm and steady on the princess's shoulders. At any other time, Azula would have shoved her away, insisted that she did not need help, but the feeling was soothing. She liked being held.

"I'm going to be sick," she said, after a long pause. Mai and Ty Lee helped her to her feet, and somehow they managed to half-drag her through the rooms toward her washroom.

She vomited into a basin, Mai carefully holding her hair out of the way, Ty Lee rubbing gentle circles on her back. Azula hated it. It was humiliating. It was disgraceful. She never wanted to feel like this, out of control of her own body, as if it was turning on her. She never wanted her eyes to swim and her throat to burn and her feet unable to take steps in the correct direction.

She wanted to make her father happy, but she didn't want to do this to herself in the process.

Tears mixed with bile streaming down her face. They washed down her face and the cloth came away steaming; heat was emanating from every part of her skin. The emotion, usually carefully suppressed, was bursting forth, and her body was not enough to contain it.

"I hate him," she snarled, teeth digging into her lips. "I hate this."

Mai and Ty Lee exchanged glances, the latter's own face looking tearful, and then they pulled Azula into her bed, lying on either side to keep her safe as the nightmares chased her down.

In the morning, Azula had a horrific headache and no recollection of what she had said.

The others didn't bring it up.


	13. I want to hurt you

The impulse came upon Azula suddenly, viciously, with such intensity that she could not brace herself against it.

It was a culmination of a series of troublesome events, starting with Zuko's taking a stand against their father and running off to join the Avatar. Azula had first heard the news when Ozai summoned her, and before he had even spoken, she had known that she would leave that meeting with more bruises than she entered it. Ozai had never hurt her like that before, never punished her like that before. He held her down and hit her across the face; he held her throat until the world spun; he traced superheated fingers down her skin in an imitation of tenderness until her nerves caught up and she screamed.

Something had shifted inside of her, falling into the empty space Zuko had used to occupy. Azula visited her brother's chambers and wanted to scream, to throw things, to burn and break all the furniture in sight, but she couldn't. She wasn't a child any longer. She couldn't throw temper tantrums. She couldn't let anyone see the cracks that were starting to spread across her surface.

She didn't know whether it was in her head or not, but she started to see the guards whispering. Her servants stopped conversations abruptly when she entered the room. Her father's generals eyed her with mistrust where previously there had been admiration.

They could tell she was slipping.

And it came over her like it hadn't in years, the desire so strong, so overwhelmingly strong, to hurt something, to destroy something. It overpowered her. It took control of every sense and every thought. It was a need. She was erupting, she was breaking apart, and she had to get rid of all the emotion. She needed something, anything, to relieve the pain.

It had used to be herself, a knife drawn across skin in the dark. But Azula didn't want that today. She wasn't going to suffer in silence. She had hurt enough. And besides, she had a perfectly willing recipient, one who wouldn't share her secrets.

Mai was off skulking, spending infinite scads of time alone, as had been her custom ever since Zuko's betrayal. She wasn't the one Azula wanted anyway.

Ty Lee came when she was called, her grey eyes saying nothing of whether she suspected Azula's intentions, whether she noticed the manic hints in the princess's smile.

Azula closed the door behind them. The candles all burned blue, feeling the influence of her overwhelming anger, the heat simmering just beneath the surface of her skin. The open windows were no respite from the heat, but Azula didn't sweat.

Ty Lee was in the process of taking off her shirt when Azula descended, not dissimilarly to her father. Her fingers caught Ty's clothes on fire, burning them away, the heat close enough to the skin to be painful. Ty let out a squeak before keeping her lips closed. Perhaps she guessed something of Azula's mood.

Azula pinned Ty down, wasting no time on gentleness, and brought her mouth down to the acrobat's shoulder, sucking and licking where neck met shoulder. Just as Ty Lee started making small, pleasurable noises, Azula sunk her teeth in. She ignored the cry of pain. She dug harder and harder, the coppery taste of blood filling her mouth. She could rip it away, rip open Ty's neck, make her bleed out here and now, take her apart.

She withdrew. Ty Lee was shaking, her hands grabbing fistfuls of the sheets, her mouth making small whimpers. And abruptly, Azula found the noises intolerable.

It didn't take very much pressure on Ty's throat for her eyes to bulge, her mouth wide, desperately searching for air. She gazed up at Azula, imploring, desperate for relief, but there was none to be found. Azula stared down and watched the breath drain away from Ty Lee little by little until her eyelids flickered closed.

She could keep holding on, hold on until Ty stopped breathing forever. But Azula didn't.

The overpowering desire to hurt something was still there. This had changed nothing, helped nothing. Ty Lee was useless. Without the option of hurting someone else, Azula drew on her robe. She would go to her father and settle for the next best thing. If she couldn't hurt herself, he would hurt her.

Ty Lee awoke alone in Azula's bed, the curtains flapping in the breeze.


	14. I'm awake and you're breathing

Azula was a light, light sleeper. She was almost always the first of the three to wake in the morning, stirring at the faintest signs of the sun over the horizon. She'd awake at the slightest movement, the slightest sound. It took all of Ty Lee's and Mai's care to move silently through the room, and always Azula would still be roused, her golden eyes opening to gleam catlike in the shadows.

But tonight it wasn't so.

Mai found herself awake, suddenly, in the darkness. Azula's room was silent but for the faint sound of wind through the open windows. The princess was in the middle, as always, but on her far side Ty Lee was sitting up. The two shared a glance, afraid to speak lest their words rouse the sleeping dragon.

It seemed almost indecent, but Mai let her eyes drift over Azula's sleeping form, and it occurred to her that she had never actually _seen_ Azula so deeply asleep before. But there she was, curled into an impossibly tiny ball on one side, her eyebrows furrowed as if she was concentrating…or, more likely, as if she was having a nightmare.

In what felt like an eternity, Mai slipped slowly out from under the sheets, letting her feet hit the floor without a sound. She started across the room, waiting for Azula to wake at any second. On the far side of the bed, Ty Lee was also standing.

"I'm sorry."

Both of them froze, not daring to move, until the silence stretched out without another word. Azula was still fast asleep, her lips still moving, though no sound came out.

Once again Mai had the sense of seeing something indecent, something she never should have seen, and that Azula certainly never would have wanted her to see. It didn't help that the words that slipped from the princess's lips were ones that she almost never said while conscious.

Out on the balcony, overlooking the shadowy city, Mai and Ty Lee felt comfortable speaking in very hushed tones.

"What do you think she dreams about?" Ty whispered. The moon was reflected in her wide eyes, making them shine silver.

"Nothing happy." Mai had only ever heard Azula apologize to one person, and that was her father. Seeing the marks Ozai left on Azula, and having at least some hint of the emotional trauma he inflicted on her, made Mai glad that she didn't know what Azula's nightmares contained.

A long silence. The city below seemed miles away; all other life seemed miles away. It was just them and the sleeping girl just beyond.

"…Do you remember when we found out?" Ty Lee again, her lips quivering. Mai didn't need to ask what she was talking about.

"Yeah." Not that they had been _close_ enough to see much. It was the sounds that echoed through Mai's memories, those grunts and the dull, repetitive thuds of skin and bone against a hard surface, and the quieter sounds of pain.

Just the remembering made bile rise in Mai's throat.

"Do you think we did the right thing?"

Mai laughed hollowly before remembering the sleeping Azula, whereupon she bit her lips together. "No. There was no right thing. Nothing about this is right. He's fucked up, and she's fucked up, and we're fucked up."

"But should we have_ told_ someone?" There was a pleading desperation in Ty's voice. Her eyes were glistening with tears. Mai sighed inwardly.

"Who could we have told?"

The question hung over them, as it had for years, so many years of keeping a secret that poisoned everything it touched. And there was no answer, so there was just silence between them, no resolution. And at last the air became too cold, and they went back to the side of their princess.

She was awake, her golden eyes gleaming in the dark, and they joined her mutely again.


	15. This is my desperation in action

**Halfway there!**

* * *

Ty Lee was open and free in her affection. She liked people, almost all people, upon first glance. She would smile and introduce herself, her enthusiasm radiating outward, a palpable force—what she would call her aura. And everybody she met, she found herself bound to. She was empathic, feeling the pain and happiness of strangers as if it was her own.

Being in close proximity with Azula, knowing what she did, was exceedingly difficult. Every bruise she saw on the princess's skin made Ty Lee ache. She cried for Azula more times than she could count, even as Azula looked on with dispassionate contempt. Sometimes Ty Lee suspected that she felt Azula's pain more acutely than Azula herself did, but she dismissed such thoughts as selfish, for she was nobody to tell Azula how to suffer.

Ty Lee loved Azula. She truly, genuinely loved her.

That made it harder still, because Ty Lee saw the writing on the wall long before either of the others did. No matter how naïve others judged her as being, she was perceptive.

"_I thought Mai was coming over too," the nine-year-old Ty Lee said, glancing around Azula's room as if expecting Mai to jump out._

"_She got waylaid by Zuzu." Azula crossed her arms, spitting her brother's mocking nickname._

It didn't change.

"_It's just you and I," the fourteen-year-old Azula purred, her hungry fingers working at the clasps of Ty Lee's shirt. "Mai'd rather spend her time with Zuko, but we'll have more fun without her anyway…"_

When she heard that Zuko had betrayed the nation to join the Avatar, Ty Lee felt as if ice had flooded her stomach—not because she feared for her country, but because she envisioned, even then, what was coming. She spent the days keeping her smile intact, trying not to alert either of them to her fear even as it grew inside of her, a monster threatening to swallow her alive.

She thought about talking to Mai, pleading with her, but knew that her words would have no effect. Mai and Ty Lee's allegiances were fundamentally different. The same love that Ty Lee held for the princess was reflected in Mai's love for the prince.

They wouldn't all come out of it together. Each passing day Ty waited for it all to break apart, for the shadowy bonds that had held them through the past months to dissipate.

It happened in a fiery crater, the blue sky above them and an infamous prison below them.

When Mai raised her knife, her steely eyes glinting as she prepared herself for a fight she surely knew she couldn't win, Ty Lee's mind went into overdrive. Her pupils dilated, her breathing quickened, and she wanted to scream out. This couldn't happen. It couldn't be happening. Not there, not then. She had seen it coming, but she wasn't prepared.

Then Azula raised her fingers, preparing to bend the lightning they had seen her manipulate before (_oh spirits she had killed like that and she was going to do it again she was going to kill Mai and it was happening too fast_) and everything shifted into black and white.

Azula kills Mai. One friend dead.

She intervened. No friends dead.

Two friends alive. One friend dead.

When time was of the utmost urgency, Ty Lee felt almost as if her body was moving of its own accord. She felt her knuckles dig into the proper pressure points as she had done a thousand times before, but never quite with this significance, never quite with this danger.

Azula fell.

As the guards dragged her and Mai away, Ty Lee wanted to reach out, wanted to scream. She hadn't meant to betray Azula. She hadn't meant for any of this to happen. She couldn't stand the look in the princess's eye, something different from anything Ty Lee had seen before. She didn't want to leave Azula alone again.

But the instant sound started leaving her lips, a cold iron hand clamped over her mouth and nose. She couldn't breathe. She remembered the feeling, so similar, of Azula's hands around her neck.

_I—love—_

Black.


	16. I want to break you

Even Ty Lee could not maintain a smile upon seeing Azula's body. She wanted to keep smiling for the princess, maintain her role of cheer and optimism, but it was impossible.

It looked as if Azula had been set upon by a beast. Cuts streaked her shoulders, rivulets of blood disturbing the princess's smooth, pale skin. Bruises marred all of her, coloring her stomach and her chest and her thighs dark greens and browns and purples. But perhaps most horrific of all, the wound that kept drawing Ty's gaze, was the burn disfiguring Azula's left breast. The vicious, open lesion bore the distinctive shape of a handprint, inevitably imprinting in Ty Lee's mind the image of a hand, searing hot, placed there and squeezing…

"Oh, Azula…" Ty Lee whispered. She stepped forward, at once wanting to take Azula into her arms and fearing the reaction.

"He made me promise never to lie to him again," Azula said, a mocking smile curving those beautiful lips. "I'm going to kill Zuko, Ty. I'm going to hunt him down and hurt him until he screams. I'm going to kill his friends and save him for last. And maybe just before I rip him open, I'll tell him about this. He betrayed me. He did this to me." After a brief pause, Azula studied her fingernails and added, almost as an afterthought, "Maybe I deserved it."

Ty Lee couldn't take it. How could Azula say these things, act as if this was normal, act as if any of this was her fault? The monster was the one who scarred his children, who pitted them against each other, not the prince or princess.

"Doesn't it hurt, Azula?" she asked, tears gathering on her eyelashes. She held out her arms in a futile gesture, wanting to comfort but not close enough.

Her words (stupid in hindsight) seemed to awaken fervor in the princess. Azula's head snapped up, animalistic, her teeth bared, her eyes gleaming with an insane light. And before Ty Lee could take it back, before she could even react, Azula was striding forward, and then her arm connected with Ty's chest, and then Ty's head slammed back against the wall and stars were bursting in front of her vision.

"Doesn't it hurt? Doesn't it hurt?" Azula mocked. She grabbed Ty Lee's head again and rammed it back against the wall. This time Ty Lee cried out, but the noise only seemed to incense the princess. "Doesn't it hurt? Doesn't it hurt? Doesn't it hurt? Doesn't it hurt?" Azula seemed to be screaming and laughing and roaring all at once, her voice hysterical and far, far too loud. There was no time to think, just pain and those golden eyes just a few inches away.

Azula's knee connected with Ty Lee's stomach, forcing her to double over, and then Azula was forcing one hand under the waistband of Ty's pants and her fingers were inside of the acrobat, pushing in and out too hard and too quickly, and the tears were spilling out of the corners of Ty Lee's eyes and running down her cheeks.

"Doesn't it hurt?" Azula crooned, her fingers still busy, her free hand brushing away Ty's tears and then digging her nails in, slowly, to her cheek. Red flowers blossomed where the princess's poisonous touch went, but Ty Lee had no time to linger on that pain, because in between her thighs Azula's fingers were growing hotter and hotter and—

"Azula! _Please!_ You're burning me! Azula! It—it really hurts!" And the look on Azula's face was no longer crazed. Her eyes were narrow and her mouth was set, a look of cold calculation as her fingers heated and heated and burned away Ty Lee a little bit at a time and—

"Stop it, Azula!"

Neither of them had heard the door open, or maybe she had been there all along, in the shadows, but Mai was suddenly there, pulling the princess off of Ty Lee, and suddenly the pain was much lessened. Ty doubled over, panting, the lingering sensation of burning still caught between her thighs. Azula wrenched herself free from Mai's grasp, glaring daggers.

"Save yourself for Zuko," Mai said, somehow managing to maintain her composure. "Ty's on your side. Just hold it off. Just keep your anger fixed on him."

A few more agonizing seconds passed, Ty fearing that any second Azula would jump forward to attack Mai instead, but at long last the princess merely laughed.

"I hope you cry when I kill him," Azula said, and then she disappeared into the washroom and closed the door behind her.

"Are you okay?" Mai placed her hands on Ty's shoulders. The acrobat nodded mutely. Her eyes were fixed on the door, behind which lay a dragon.

There was nothing but silence.

Ty Lee could feel it underneath her skin: the beginning of an end.


End file.
